yeah, after I deleted the extra files and remounted the drive as master
the computer booted normally. Weird. Just for drill I ran a chkdsk (no
problems found) and defragged the volume. That 2,048 number really caught
my eye and reminded me of the 512 FAT limit. I'm no math major but having
worked with computers since DOS 2 numbers like 512, 1,024, and 2,048 send
up all kinds of red flags.

You can put 4,294,967,295 on an NTFS volume and technically you can stuff
them all in the root folder if you wanted. There is however instances
where having a "large" number of files in the root folder leads to MFT
fragmentation that could lead to an "NTLDR is missing" error message when
you boot the computer so it is not a good idea to store too many files in
the root folder. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320397/ According to
that article the problem was resolved with SP4.

The 2,048 files and the fact that it is a multiple of 512 is a
coincidence only. Did you get the computer to boot after you moved the
files? A blinking cursor only at boot time usually means that there is
no active partition or that the active flag was removed (the wrong
partition is active).

John

keith w wrote:

I always thought that NTFS did away with limitations on the number of
files you can have in the root directory. Today I had a user that
couldn't boot up to Win2K, the box just sits there with a blinking
cursor before the normal splash screen has a chance to come up, and I
figured the hard drive might have gotten hosed, so I mounted the drive
as a slave (E:) in another computer to see if I could recover any data.
When I went to the root of E: there were exactly 2,048 files there,
mostly .csv and .txt files from data downloads from the past 3 or 4
years, in addition to the normal system files and app logs. Apparently
somebody told this person that this is where she should put all of her
data files. These were all one-off files that weren't needed anymore so
I was able to blow them out and remount the drive as the master and
Win2K boots normally again. The number 2,048 is an exact multiple of 4
times the 512 limit in FAT... no way this could just be a coincidence! I
Googled this but couldn't find anything that points to a 2,048 file
limit on NTFS. Not that this is a big deal or anything that we're likely
to see again, but now I"m really curious.

Relevant Pages

Re: NTFS question - max number of files on root of C:?... after I deleted the extra files and remounted the drive as master the ... where having a "large" number of files in the root folder leads to MFT ... Did you get the computer to boot after you moved the files? ... them out and remount the drive as the master and Win2K boots normally ...(microsoft.public.win2000.file_system)

Re: Invalid boot.ini file cannot be opened... invalid entries the boot process usually chokes.... The file belongs in the root folder of the system drive, ... The file can be edited with notepad.... file to its proper location in the root folder try the Msconfig utility ...(microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)

Re: NTFS question - max number of files on root of C:?... You can put 4,294,967,295 on an NTFS volume and technically you can stuff them all in the root folder if you wanted. ... There is however instances where having a "large" number of files in the root folder leads to MFT fragmentation that could lead to an "NTLDR is missing" error message when you boot the computer so it is not a good idea to store too many files in the root folder. ... I Googled this but couldn't find anything that points to a 2,048 file limit on NTFS. ...(microsoft.public.win2000.file_system)

Re: Invalid boot.ini file cannot be opened... Let's make doubly sure that the file isn't there, at the command prompt issue the following command: ... The backup file may be usable but you will have to make sure that it is a good boot.ini file, if the file is corrupt or if it doesn't contains a valid ARC path it may prevent Windows from booting altogether. ... Windows can boot without the boot.ini file but if the file has incorrect or invalid entries the boot process usually chokes. ... Or you could copy the above to a notepad document and then save it as boot.ini and put it in the C:\ root folder....(microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)